The Tampa Tribune claims to be mainstream and middle-of-the-road on its editorial pages. The Tribune alter ego is its attack dog columnist Daniel Ruth. The Tribune knows it can't write the things that he writes and claim to be objective. So they allow Ruth to speak for them. He pens what they won't dare. We point out the Tribune's duplicity on this website. To join this blog email tontog@gawab.com and request an invitation.

Sunday, September 18, 2005

A Concert Experience To Die For? (9/18/05)

Below is my letter of September 18, 2005 to the Tampa Tribune. Think it will be published by them? Well, it's being published here!___________________________________________________________________

With each column Tribune attack dog Daniel Ruth manages to display his hypocrisy in a new way. In today’s column he speaks of the two participants in a recent Tampa Ybor City nightclub incident in which one man was stabbed to death by the other. Ruth goes on to say, “If only Laskas had been given an extra 20 minutes of life, he and Payne might well have wound up having a beer together—and two futures would have been spared.”

All of this compassion from a man who has made a career of penning incessant name-calling columns filled with hate speech. A man who has an attitude of, “It’s me against them and it doesn’t matter who ‘them’ happens to be”. A man who goes out of his way to impress upon others in the community as to how little regard he has for their attitudes, opinions and viewpoints. And all of this has been accomplished under the aegis of the Tampa Tribune, which, in itself, has become the “paradigm of hypocrisy” in Florida newspapers.

Through his columns Ruth has helped create an atmosphere of incivility in the community. Is it any wonder that victims of his bile take notice of his disregard for them?

Is Ruth so naïve that he can’t make the connection between his own incivility and the incivility that might be found in a Tampa nightclub? I think not! It’s hypocrisy on display—pure and simple